Sunday, 2 October 2011

A Hot Day with Bite

Another ridiculously hot day for October, clear blue sky and a light E/SE wind. The night was warm and I had high hopes for the moth trap, would there be any good migrants? Well no, but a moderate range of locals. I know I have posted red-green carpet before recently, but the one below is a very different looking individual, with a much more contrasting pattern.

There was one new species for the year in the form of 2 deepbrowndart, one already quiet worn. This is the better of the two.

As it was the first Saturday of the month the volunteers were working on the reserve this morning, six of us spent the morning sprucing up the area around the Centre. In fact it was pretty busy for a time this morning, as well as our work, Michelle was running a family activity with fire-lighting and shelter building and then the digger that has been pulling out tree stumps for us was taken away through the car park. Luckily things then quietened down, apart for a persistent whine, mosquitoes are everywhere just now and I got bitten numerous times.

Later in the afternoon on the way to lock the hides I came across a pair of speckledwood on the path in the low sunlight. The male wing-fluttering beside the female, which seemed not obviously impressed, although she was not flying away, so I guess she might have been more interested than she looked.

I did not see much else, but Michelle reported that her group found a couple of grasssnakes, two smoothnewts, a toad and, most surprisingly a raftspider in a puddle caught in an old pond-liner we use to cover a small clay pit.